Bridging the gap? [video]

[iamresponding]

[Rich hasn't been very vocal lately. After Murderworld, especially after running into those bugs, he retreated into himself a little bit. It wasn't full moping, just thoughtfulness, and he needed some quiet time.]

[But he's got to speak up on this. He's got a perspective most don't and maybe that can help.]

Kid Q already got the lecture out of the way, so I'm not gonna do that. That isn't what this is.

In that last mission, some of us had disagreements about lethal force, and we had to sideline them because of the urgency of the situation, but it's something we still need to talk about, because those disagreements aren't going to go away.

Now, I occupy a unique position on this. I've been a meta-powered cop, a superhero, and a soldier. I've been to war. I've led an army in a war against omnicidal space bugs, and you can be damn sure I didn't have my soldiers hold back.

I didn't hold back either. I've killed more than my fair share of sentients, and when it came down to facing the intergalactic despot that ordered his army to slaughter billions, I pulled his guts out through his throat. And you know what, if given the chance to do it again, I'd do it ten thousand times over.

My point here is I get it. I've seen that side of things well enough to understand sometimes that's what it takes. The problem here is this is not warfare that we're facing. Right now, we're law enforcement. We have a mandate from this universe's government to follow their laws, and a responsibility to the public to follow their morals -- and they value life here -- and having also allied myself with some ugly customers for the sake of the common good, I know that even terrible people can sometimes find purpose and redeem themselves, so this universe valuing life enough to give at least some criminals a chance to reform ain't exactly entirely misplaced.

But whether any of us agree with that principle or not, the public trusts us to follow a certain standard and we ultimately serve them. When it comes to police work, there's levels of force. With a team of over thirty metapowered individuals, we're a small army. I don't know if any of you noticed, but even with non-lethal force we cleaned their clocks the other day, with no casualties, most of the villains detained, no civilians harmed, and minimal serious injuries.

Having that kind of power and the kind of numbers we have changes the entire ballgame, because it changes the nature of the conflicts we face. It means that villains can go to greater extremes -- extremes that in other situations would require fatal force to stop -- and we're powerful enough that we can handle those extremes. When you're a superhero, controlling battlefield conditions and preventing casualties is a lot easier than it would be without the metapowers.

I guess what I'm trying to do here is bridge the gap and try to help people understand why all this is the way it is.

Comments

[meanmonkey]

It's hard for me to understand the need to allow dangerous enemies to live. I will abide by that law, of course, but it seems reckless to me.

While redemption is possible, of course, to me it seems much more likely that we're simply allowing a threat to continue to be a danger to the people we're meant to protect.

Prisons are not impenetrable or inescapable, after all. On the other hand, death, with rare exception, is.

[iamresponding]

The ones here actually are pretty solid, is the thing. I've looked into that myself.

[He's not really the type to research things, but statistics aren't that hard to find.]

[He shares the links.]

Takron Galtos has one prison outbreak on record -- the Fatal Five. It was done by the Emerald Eye, which is pretty damn powerful and reforms every time it's destroyed, so killing it ain't even an option.

But as far as normal prison breaks go the UP has a good record. Way better than back home in my universe and time, where prisons practically have a revolving door. Before Takron Galtos, in past prisons, they had a low escape rate, too.

Their recidivism rates are also pretty good. There'll always be repeat offenders, but they have a high rate of rehabilitation. Lots of education programs, lots of support on reintegration back into society...

Crime rates in general aren't that bad. Rimbor's the only exception. It's the big crime hot spot and a lot of it is out of control but apparently the big issue is the planet was a mess before it was a UP world and crime is so entrenched in society there it'll take ages to fix it. But it's the exception that proves the rule.

[He props up his omnicom on the table next to the couch he's sitting on, and gestures with his robotic hand.]

So what kind of message does that send if we kill when we don't need to? 'Hey, your justice system has some hitches but otherwise works pretty well. We're going to ignore that and kill people we could possibly just arrest 'cause we're uncomfortable with putting them in prisons they probably actually won't break out of.'

[meanmonkey]

I don't disagree entirely, please understand. I wouldn't argue for lethal force being common, either - the threat I think of isn't simply "criminals", or even every person that fights us, and it would be cruel to do that.

Still, there are some that can't be reasoned with, and won't be redeemed, and they are usually the ones with the most power and do the most damage. That's my experience, at any rate.

[iamresponding]

I don't disagree with you either. Like I said, I wasn't messing around when I faced the monster that was responsible for the war. Guts. Out through his mouth.

But the Legion's bylaws don't say any differently. If it's the only way to protect our lives and/or the lives of others, both UP law and Legion protocol respect that sometimes it has to be done.

I think, given all the arguing, we just need to all get on the same page as to what constitutes "it's the only way." It's different here, with the power and numbers we have. All of us are coming into it from different worlds, with different conflicts, and have different perspectives. We all need to reorient to where we are right now.

[meanmonkey]

And it's not the only way, always. Even when we think it is.

[ Kubo proved that, with her father. ]

It's just a matter of having the right people with the right skills to be able to avoid it.

[whyarewehere]

Can I put a PS on this?

[ Too late he's already doing it. ]

PS: Killing people is actually kind of hard. Me and some guys tried to do it once and it took forever. Save yourselves the misery, seriously.

[video]

[saltsweet]

Whether it's permissible for us to use lethal force is pretty key to whether or not the Legion is a true peacekeeping force or just another private army. Maybe my memory's fuzzy, but I didn't know this was a point of contention in the Legion.

[turntex]

seriously??
dude it is disturbingly easy what the fuck were you even doing

[superscholar]

It's both.

Sometimes, it's hard to bring yourself to do what needs to be done. Other time, it's hard to keep yourself from going for the easy solution. The circumstances differ depending on the person. Whatever the case, it doesn't change the fact that life is valuable.

Please remember that.

[turntex]

okay gotcha real nice speech and all
youre gonna win an oscar or whatever for sure buddy
but this is grif so i guarantee you hes not talking about the emotional struggle
hes talking about the pure physical effort required to actually kill a dude ill bet you anything

[superscholar]

[ the sad part is, gohan knows dave is right. ]

My point still stands.

[unrecovered]

He is.

[Source: witnessed it in action multiple times. Was the target of several attempts.]

[goddamngrenades]

Gotta say, buddy, I am trying to imagining you...putting effort into anything violent and coming up empty.

[whyarewehere]

Our best. Obviously.

[whyarewehere]

Nah. Really. Just the actually getting people to die and stay that way part is hard.

[whyarewehere]

I feel like there is a lightbulb joke to be made about how many of us it takes to actually kill somebody, and the punchline has something to do with Caboose.

[whyarewehere]

Well I mean, it's not like I personally tried very hard.

text;

[a_shadow]

I just got here so I'm not familiar with the ins and outs of the whole argument but I have a lot of experience with killing people and finding out they were the wrong people in the aftermath

[walkingballpit]

I get it, Rich. I do. I'm not judging anybody for things they did, but ... this is still the hill I'm going to die on. Because I don't know if I can trust people. Cue one of the old guard saying that makes me a weak link.

[unrecovered]

Okay, I'll bite: why do you think you can't trust us? Because we have killed, or because we see killing as a viable solution?

[As far as Wash is concerned, it'll always be a viable solution; the rules just dictate that it's the last one.]

[unrecovered]

How many Reds and Blues does it take to break a lightbulb? Two: Caboose, and someone to tell him the lightbulb needs "help."

[video]

[jonesiseverywhere]

I dunno man, I been running with deadly ninjas as a vigilante for years now and we never killed anyone. I don't get why you would except because they get in your way, and that's a total bad guy move. I mean, you can't be the good guy and do bad guy things.

Re: [video]

[gonebyebye]

Are they really deadly ninjas if they've never killed anybody?

I'm honestly curious here. I've only met four ninjas before. And they were giant turtles, so they weren't exactly your garden-variety ninjas.

[iamresponding]

Exactly.

I guess I'm just trying to make people see that in a lot of situations we actually have the right people and the right skills. For situations we don't, we all know what we have to do.

[jonesiseverywhere]

...Theoretically deadly, dude. Trained to be deadly if they gotta be but not-

Waaaait, turtles? Color-coded, named after Italian painters? Did they have a guy named Casey Jones with them?